Alex Singleton is part of the Daily Telegraph's leader-writing team and is a contributing editor at the Sunday Telegraph. You can visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter.

The downside of Lib Dem democracy

Full coverage of UK politicsA room "full of weirdos" gets to decide Liberal Democrat policy. At least, that's how a senior Liberal Democrat figure colourfully put it over dinner last night.

Uniquely among the major parties, the Lib Dems let members decide policy hamstringing the leadership.

For example, the party leadership came out in favour of part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, but the proposal was rejected at its 2005 party conference.

The proposal then had to be re-submitted, in a watered-down form, to the members at its spring conference the following year.

This might seem democratic, but for the Orange Book, modernising wing of the party, it limits the party's ability to pursue policies that appeal to Liberal Democrat voters, rather than core members.

Lib Dem voters are rather more right-wing than signed-up members, and party strategists believe that the left-wing bias of members is a problem because it is against the Tories in the south of England that they will have most plausible fights at the next election, rather than against Labour in the north.

The Orange Bookers look to the Democrats in the United States, where registered voters rather than paid-up supporters are counted as members, and wonder if some similar scheme might liberate the policy-making process from the sandal brigade.